(There's really been a lot of these, right?)
The stormy season of April had passed by during the night, and with the rising sun, the day is giving way to the fragrant bloom of May blossoms. Clouds part way for the bright sun to illuminate the paintbrush hues of the landscape, and the warm late-season breeze carries with it all varieties of birdsong, filling the air with the color and chorus of life.
Which is why this was the perfect day to stay indoors to do some inner research. For once, it was better to disregard these byproducts for today, the piercing bore of human progress has finally cracked open the foundations of reality; you had just discovered a time machine.
Well, what else could it be? It even looked like someone had done a spectacularly terrible job of trying to disguise the fact that it could pretty much only be a time machine. It was, in fact the most stereotypically time machine-like time machine anyone could imagine, yet it looks as if someone had sloppily taped cardboard around it in an attempt to make it look like a refrigerator. It was such shoddy work, and you wondered why anyone had even bothered.
MOD EDIT:Original text moved to hide tag
The thing that was definitely a time machine loomed like a statue in the center of the room, wafting out a faint scent of ozone and copper. It must have displaced the matter around it as it arrived, since one of its edges was occupying the space where half of your chair should have been. As you shove the chair aside, it toppled over on its two remaining legs, thumping down on the dusty floor. Looking around, you started reaching for the entrance handle, but thought better of it. Instead, you move over to the small mailbox-shaped bin attached to the side of the machine. There was nothing inside except for a newspaper clipping and an envelope. You take a look at the newspaper, a cutout of the week’s weather, dated three years into the future. It was otherwise unremarkable, so you open up the envelope.
Wow, why would you write something like that? It was disorienting, seeing your own handwriting attached to a message you clearly have never written, and definitely, resolutely, never will. But now, you know you will. The presence of the note, along with the time machine, is undeniable. With the staggering weight of this realization, you reached for a chair, but found only half of one. You plop down on the
